Washington, D.C. – Following the settlement decision in Bartz v. Anthropic, Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler issued the following statement:  

“The most important thing to understand about the settlement proposal announced today is that the plaintiffs already lost on fair use—Judge Alsup said AI training is ‘exceedingly transformative’ and that a market for AI training is ‘not one the Copyright Act entitles Authors to exploit. So these terms are only really about how Anthropic obtained some of its training data (from shadow libraries online), not what Anthropic did with the data,” said Executive Director Brandon Butler.

“Even the use of shadow library websites is hardly a settled issue, as another federal judge in the same district ruled that doing so is a fair use when the purpose is AI training. Finally, it’s crucial context that the settlement was secured under extreme duress due to the wildly disproportionate statutory damages available under copyright law.” In sum, even if the court approves the settlement, which is far from certain given the diversity of the class, its impact on the fair use rights of others is exactly zero.” 

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About Re:Create: Re:Create is a coalition comprised of a broad membership of think tanks, advocacy organizations, libraries, technology companies – large and small – that serves as the leading coalition united in the fight for a balanced copyright system that is pro-innovation, pro-creator, and pro-consumer. Not every member of the Re:Create Coalition necessarily agrees on every issue, but the views we express represent the consensus among the bulk of our membership.